Alban Back in the 80's I was flipping through channels and I found this movie. I didn't know what it was but I knew it was funny. I caught it in the middle and they never said the name of the movie. I've been looking for it since and nobody knew what I was talking about. So if there's someone else out there in my shoes, I'm going to make a review that will be searchable. Because right now there's NOTHING on the internet like what I'm about to write.(minor spoilers) Twin cities of Amos and Bamos. We'll call Amos "B" and Bamos "A". That's so you don't get confused.Then they ended up drinking 100 year old hooch. Zup said you need to respect old age.At another point, Wendell said something wrong and Zup said, "Don't you know the King's English?" And Wendell said, "No. Is he English?" And of course Zup wants to be executed by something modern like an airplane. They accommodate him and he sits in a royal airplane bombing target chair.Weird stuff, but good.Now that I've provided something for a search engine to find, hopefully anyone else out there frantically looking for this movie will be able to find it. I just watched the whole thing on TCM, uninterrupted. Nice.Overall I found it to be really good. Like a cross between a Marx Bros and an Abbot and Costello movie. I was never in on the whole "Wheeler and Woolsey" thing but now I might just give them a chance.A lot of their banter when looking at the miniature battlefield was textbook Abbot and Costello. But the overall absurd situation was pure Marx.Also of note, the mean aunt is introduced very early in the movie. About 10 words in and you'd swear she was Endora from Bewitched. She sounds like Endora but she looks like Carol Burnette. She is neither of these.Boris Karloff has a bit part in this movie as an opportunistic scam artist. The one guy calls him Boris. It looked like it might have been a mistake but they missed it in editing so they just went with it. He was already an established actor by then and he made a kagillion movies in 1931. I'm guessing it was easier just to leave it in than to try to get ahold of Karloff and get him to re-shoot that one scene. It didn't take anything away from the story, so if it was me I'd have just left it in as well.Korny gags, silly puns, unbelievable situations. If you like this sort of light-hearted romp, then you might just enjoy Cracked Nuts. Plus it's just a little over an hour long. They crammed a lot of funny into a short space.Oh, I also FFed over most of the song and dance scene at the bottom of the staircase. I've never been one for that sort of thing. But at one point it looked like the guy stumbled back, lunged forward again, and began singing way too close to the girl's ear. If you look at the mechanics of that one move it looks pretty goofy. And she began laughing at him, leading me to think it wasn't planned.

mark.waltz Wheeler and Woolsey were a mixed bag in the minds of the public, but today, they have been re-discovered after decades of obscurity, first thanks to the old version of "American Movie Classics", then of course, "Turner Movie Classics", where they live on today. Only a few of their movies made it out onto VHS during the heyday of that disappearing media, and a few ("Dixiana", "Half Shot at Sunrise", "Hook, Line and Sinker") ended up on the public domain. Laser Disc manufacturers saw a market for their films ("Imagine Entertainment" back in the early 1990's) and a majority of their movies ended up there as well. Fortunately, as VHS sales have dwindled and Laser Discs have seemed to fallen off the face of the earth, the Warner Brothers Archive (ironic, since all but one of their features came from RKO Radio) has released pretty much all of their films, about ten of them into a special set, the rest individually."Cracked Nuts" is one of their best early films, as it is very elaborate and sort of ahead of its time. It pre-dates "Duck Soup" by two years, and one comedy routine (concerning the town of "Watt") was a decade before Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First?". Wheeler and Woolsey here play old pals who run into each other in a Ruritanian country still under the old monarchy but threatened by constant rebellion. Both are rivals for the throne and are pitted against each other thanks to former king Stanley Fields and two trouble-making rebels, one of them played by Boris Karloff. Ironically, two years after this, they would appear in a similar film, "Diplomaniacs", which saw them representing Native Americans at a Warsaw peace conference.Here, Wheeler gets the romantic story, paired with Dorothy Lee and fighting for her affections with her possessive aunt, the always amusing Edna May Oliver. Wheeler and Lee get to do a song and dance routine here which results in a kick-fest between the two of them and the imperious Oliver, a parody of the slap dance sequences Wheeler and Woolsey had done as far back as the original "Rio Rita" on Broadway and on film. The slapstick highlight of the film is a sequence where King Woolsey (as "King Zup") is seated outside his palace as the cross-eyed bomber Ben Turpin drops missiles on him and Wheeler desperately tries to protect his pal. Some of the comic asides between Woolsey and former queen Leni Stengel miss their target, but then a few land straight on. "Cracked Nuts" may not have the same impact as "Duck Soup", but there are moments when it almost reeks of genius.

bkoganbing Getting there first, exploring grounds that the Marx Brothers covered so thoroughly in Duck Soup are the RKO team of Wheeler&Woolsey who get themselves mixed up in the politics of some backwater country in South America in Cracked Nuts. Bob Woolsey wins the throne of El Dorania in a crap game and spends the rest of the film trying to avoid assassination plots cooked up by disgruntled general Stanley Fields.Woolsey's partner Bert Wheeler has his own problems in the romance area. He's in love with Dorothy Lee, but he's got to deal with her formidable aunt, Edna May Oliver. Wheeler is the schnook of the team, playing parts that Eddie Cantor and later Danny Kaye would do with far more acclaim.Cracked Nuts might not be all its cracked up to be. I'd certainly rate Duck Soup over it. Yet it does have its moments, particularly the last attempt at Woolsey's life by Ben Turpin, dropping bombs during a ceremony.It's a film that can stand on its own merits. But I wish Edna May Oliver had more screen time. She's a favorite of mine and I've never been disappointed with her in any performance. She's reason enough to see Cracked Nuts.

ksf-2 Cracked Nuts is a Wheeler and Woolsey vaudeville-type comedy made during the downward spiral of the depression. The patter, jokes, and non-stop puns come out quickly, with pauses for audience laughter (in the first half of the film). The jokes start right from the beginning, even during the opening credits. Look for Boris Karloff, who had already made 60 movies by 1931. Director Ed Cline had been directing comedies since 1916, so he certainly knew his business. He had also directed most of the W C Fields movies, which explains the great comedic timing. Character actress Edna May Oliver is Aunt Minnie, who always played the disapproving, prim & proper matriarch in Tale of Two Cities, Little Women, and tons of other movies. Beautiful Dorothy Lee, with her big expressive eyes, plays Betty Harrington, and had already made several movies with Wheeler & Woolsey, so she knew their timing. German actress Leni Stengel plays Carlotta. Fun, if a little dated, (note the blocks of ice being delivered at the start of the movie) it has the feel of an Abbott & Costello film. Although the plot and jokes are the stars here, unlike in an A & C movie, where it was more about the stars. It was made prior to the Hays Code, and except for a gay reference at about 23 minutes in, it is not at all sexual or naughty, although there are opportunities, since the king wears a kilt... This 1931 version does not seem to be related to the 1941 film of same name, which was also directed by Ed Cline. For an even funnier Wheeler and Woolsey film, watch Peach O Reno...